Varuna Pumps banks on Salman;releases ads across 1,800 Sultan screens

Ahmedabad-based water pump company Varuna Pumps has adopted a very innovative marketing strategy to reach out to its audience. Building on their popular radio spots from last year, it recently launched a two-film campaign, which was aired across 1,800 movie theatres during the intermission of Salman Khan’s biggest Eid release - Sultan. Theatres across the Hindi Speaking Market (HSM), Gujarat, Maharashtra and the Southern belt, comprising Kerala and Tamil Nadu are being used. The company plans to target around 50-60% of the theatres where Sultan is playing.

The films have been conceptualised by Scarecrow Communications who came on the company’s board last year. The agency has tried to revive the artistic short film format, which is getting lost these days. The ad films have been made, keeping in mind the problems which people face due to water shortage in both rural and urban market. The film has been made in five different launguages - Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu and Kannada.

Marketing Plan:

Varun Gajjar, Director, Marketing and Sales, Varuna Pumps said, “Our plan is to run the campaign for at least two weeks across the 1,800 screens showing Sultan. Then based on the response from the audience, we will again get it back to the theatres in August, especially during the long holiday weekend. Regarding getting it on TV, it will happen sometime around September.”

Gajjar explained why they chose to use this medium. “Had it been not Sultan, which is being promoted as a block buster movie even before its release, we wouldn’t have gone this way to launch our films. I guess TV would have made more sense then, but we saw a huge opportunity lying and thought of immediately grasping it. Around two months were spent on deciding which movie theatres to run our films on. We are not specifically targeting high-end multiplexes, but we had to keep in mind halls, where our dealers will surely visit,” he said.

Spends:

Gajjar refused to share any figures on the marketing budget of the campaign. However, he agreed to the fact that it is no doubt an expensive and a risky strategy, which the company is taking for the very first time.The company claims that it has been built on the basis of trust and over the last few years, it has never launched any big-scale mass media campaign of this stature.

Creative execution:

Speaking about the execution of the film, Manish Bhatt, Founder Director, Scarecrow Communications, said, “Water is a highly emotional topic for Indians, there is an erratic importance of it in our society. Last year, when we came on board, looking at their media budget, we suggested the company, not to make their presence felt by trying different mediums; instead they should concentrate with only one. We launched seven radio spots and it was very well received. Post the positive response, the company got encouraged to take the next step and launch the video format.”

One of the films highlights a villager woman’s plight in walking to a well to fetch water, in the midst of a vast and arid stretch. The other one set in a city, features an aged Parsi couple’s struggle to get water from the ground floor. In both these ads, their lives get simpler with Varuna Pumps.